batteries

Frank Fusco

Member
Messages
12,782
Location
Mountain Home, Arkansas
A lot of us use cordless tools in our shops. I have several sets of these but never was able to get good use from them. The batteries went belly-up very quickly. My DeWalt drill would give me no more than two screws worth of use before dying. My B&D tools haven't been used in years for the same reason. Finally I contacted Battery Outfitters of Golden, Missouri. https://batteryoutfitters.com (they have other locations also). The friendly guy I talked to told me a big cause of failure is that a tool and it's batteries sometimes sit in a wharehouse or on store shelves for a long time before being sold. Not using a battery causes early demise. Also, between uses a battery should be on the charge, not in the tool waiting to be used. Strange as this sounds, one might be better off with only one battery than two since one would sit not being charged and would go bad. I bought a new battery for the DeWalt and now have a working tool. I still have eight dead batteries that will go to the recycling center. A new batt for the B&D stuff is coming soon.
 
I've found it's best to cycle them on/off the charger/tools often. My Hitachi chargers only seem charge to full, then don't charge again until the battery is swapped out.

I've had better luck and battery life doing that than waiting to charge them when they are dead. As a matter of fact, many of the Lithum Ion batteries won't take a charge after they get too low as they have a built in circuit that checks for short circuits. If the charge is too low the circuit thinks the battery is shorted and won't charge it. I've had luck forcing a charge from another battery charger, if the circuit is on the charger side, otherwise you may have to disassemble the battery to pull off that magic.
 
I suppose I'm protected by the idiot factor or just don't know any better, but I use Porter Cable 18V battery tools, drill driver, light, 6" circular saw and a saws-all.... I only have 2 batteries for all of those tools.... I mostly use the drill driver to put face plates on my bowl blanks and for setting screws around the house... since getting them a few years back, I put one battery on the driver, put the other in a drawer for when the first goes down, switch them and put the down battery on the charger... they get swapped about every 3-4 weeks.... so far (Knocking on green wood - two raps to the side of the head), have never had a failure and we just put an 8 x12 deck, using 2x10's on the back porch and new front steps using same 2x10's, treated lumber, just using one battery.... it drove about 8 each 3" screws in each board on the deck and 6 on the front steps... I've had the P C sets about 5 years by now....
The two saws will eat a battery pretty quickly though.... the light has a burned out bulb, so it's not used at all for now.

I had a 14V craftsman driver that I used for nearly 10 years, same as the Port Cable, just swapped batteries when they went flat and recharged... but the batteries finally reach a point where they won't charge... the driver is still good, just no batteries for it. May have to check out Frank's friend at batteryoutfitters.
 
I have the old blue Royobi set (saw, drill, router etc) and after many many year (I'm guessing 20 or there abouts) and two set of batteries I finally upgraded to the green Li-ion batteries and seems to work fine. The drill seems to be ready to be replaced, the chuck wot stay tight and I'll probably just buy a green replacement.
 
Y'all have had much better experience than I. Mine seemed to die very soon after purchase. Setting two screws was about their limit. Hoping this new one performs better. FWIW, in the meantime I had been using some old corded drills. These are older than me. And, that's pretty danged old. A couple must be hitting close to the century mark.
 
Frank I just went though a debate in my mind about cord vs cordless in my decision to purchase a Dremel Clone. the price difference wasn't that much but I didn't want to go through the hassle of having another charger and having batteries that would eventually be replace. In this case I concluded that it would only see bench use so my decision to go corded was base on that. I could see no advantage to going cordless and some disadvantage.
 
I have the Ryobi Li ion wit a six bay 'smart' charger. If I understand it correctly it cycles the batteries occasionally. In fact, one day I needed a battery only to find all six in the charger with no charge. Since then I keep one charged battery in the cabinet with the tools at the ready - just in case the charger thinks its cute to drain the batteries just before I need them.
 
Since I went to MAKITA 18 volt lithium I have had great performance---- two of the batteries are 2008 and still going strong---- after some hard use.
 
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